


the human tradition of living and dying

by DontTapTheGlass



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Djinn are tricky, Episode: s01e05 Bottled Appetites, Everyone thinks Geralt is Dead, Everyone thinks Yennefer is dead, Fear of Feels, Found Family, Geralt of Rivia is Missing, Grief/Mourning, Hope, Human Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, I'm Bad At Tagging, Jaskier | Dandelion Needs a Hug, Jaskier | Dandelion-centric, M/M, Not Really Character Death, Vague Knowledge of Games/Books, Witcher Medallion Knows Shit, You Could Choose Not to be a Witcher
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 07:55:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23847778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DontTapTheGlass/pseuds/DontTapTheGlass
Summary: The story of the White Wolf ends in Rinde with a djinn and a witch - at least Jaskier thinks it does.or: A Witcher makes a wish.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Original Female Character(s), Jaskier | Dandelion & Triss Merigold, Jaskier | Dandelion & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Triss Merigold/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 8
Kudos: 158
Collections: The Witcher Alternate Universes





	the human tradition of living and dying

**Author's Note:**

> i am my own editor, so please be kind.

_“You can’t outrun destiny just because you’re terrified of it.”_

_______

The story of the White Wolf ends in Rinde with a djinn and a witch.

In the aftermath, staring at a collapsed building, Jaskier mutters to himself – “This can’t be happening” and “It wasn’t supposed to go this way” and “I’m going to write you a song” – and the elf man circles the building. He makes a full lap of the building once, twice before settling next to Jaskier.

After a – after time has gone by, Jaskier couldn’t tell you if it was five seconds or five hours, the mayor settles next to the men as well. People from the town had come to idly stare at the building from afar, but none moved forwards. They just stared at the three men, and the three men stared at the pile of rubble.

“Did they have any family?” the mayor asks, voice soft but still too harsh against the silent introspection they’d fallen into.

“I don’t know,” the elf doesn’t tear his eyes from the rubble.

The mayor looks to Jaskier, who is suddenly hiccuping for breath as the words make their way into his head. “ _Does Geralt have family?_ ” means _“Who do we need to contact to tell them he’s dead?”_

Because he’s dead.

Geralt is dead.

Jaskier doesn’t know what to do about that. There _isn’t_ anything he can do about that, really, but he just… Geralt can’t… it doesn’t feel real.

They sit and watch the dust settle. The world still turns, but Geralt is dead.

When he goes to Roach that evening, head fuzzy and eyes red, she seems to know. He goes to pet her neck and she nickers lightly, pressing her head into his chest and nuzzling him. He thought he had no more tears left, but he’s proven wrong as he clings to the mare, sobs racking his body.

They start clearing the rubble the next day. Jaskier doesn’t wait for the bodies – can’t see Geralt bloodied and lifeless. Him and Roach put Rinde behind them, and Geralt along with it.

The story of Geralt of Rivia ends in Rinde.

Jaskier refuses to let that be the end of his own story.

_______

It has been six months.

He writes a ballad. It is somewhere between an ode and a plea – a vicious scream at the universe for letting a man like Geralt of Rivia die. People do not sing along, but it is one of the most well-known songs he sings. When he enters a tavern, it does not matter how packed or how rowdy the crowd is, when he plays the opening melody of that specific song the entire room falls silent and mourns. He’s seen people shed tears, others lean wistfully against their partners, all reveling in the final tale of the White Wolf.

Though Jaskier never titles it, never bothers to give something so weighty a name, he hears it nicknamed “Road’s End” and something in him swells the first time he hears it referred to as such. Long after the tavern had closed that night, he worked his way through the chords of the song and cried, mourning and mourning and _missing_.

Him and Roach navigate the continent, bringing tales of the Witcher and news of his death. It is a morose few months. He is occasionally approached by women telling him they’re “sorry for his loss” and men who give him earnest handshakes and slide him a few more coins. Maybe two or three times someone had approached him and accused him of lying – the White Wolf couldn’t be dead – and Jaskier would get in maybe three swings before the accuser would be thrown from the bar by other patrons.

Suddenly the whole continent was there with Jaskier, it seemed, mourning the loss of a legend.

It should help to know that Geralt will never be forgotten, but it also annoys the shit out of him. Half of the towns he finds himself in had shunned Jaskier and Geralt when they’d been there years before, be it outward hatred and fear or the subtle stares and tension that he knew drove Geralt even more crazy than the blunt revulsion. Jaskier’s pain wasn’t meant to be met by these people with pain of their own. He had enough of it for all of them.

Even with his new ballad and his most favored story figure dead, Toss a Coin remains his greatest hit.

_______

He meets his second Witcher ever just south of Lyria.

It has been a year since his last.

His name is Eskel and he is soft in all the places Geralt was rough, and something about that scares Jaskier a little. He was so certain he had known what a Witcher was, and then there was Eskel with his goddamn patience and kindness and – and if he weren’t a Witcher, Jaskier thinks he might just fall in love with him a little, just for the night.

As it is, after Jaskier finishes his set at a local inn he is approached by the man with a Witcher medallion around his neck and the very sight of it almost sends the bard running. But then the man introduces himself as Geralt’s brother – and Jaskier knows they aren’t really brothers, not by blood – and Jaskier feels his fear dissipate and he is back to his baseline feeling of not feeling at all and – and –

And Eskel buys their first round, asks the questions he needs answered, asks for the full story of Geralt’s last venture saving the witch that saved the bard.

“He always had a streak of martyrdom, didn’t he?” Eskel’s soft smile holds only grief.

“He thought he’d find a way to cheat death, I think. Stupid bastard.” Jaskier sips his ale. “And really, the worst part of that is that he typically _did_. This was a horrible, horrible outlier, Eskel, let me tell you-“

And so he did. He buys the second round and tells the Witcher stories that weren’t worthy of being turned into songs but are still so goddamn good he couldn’t bear to forget them.

“And this asshole has the audacity to tell me we aren’t friends not ten minutes after I help rid him of Selkimore guts! Honestly, the nerve on that man!”

“You should’ve seen him when we were kids. He was so desperate for people to be his friend it was almost sad at times,” Eskel sighs.

Jaskier’s eyes are suddenly shining at the mental image of a lonely child with snow white hair desperately clinging to limbs and fingertips just to get people to stay. “Tell me about him, the Geralt you knew,” he says.

Eskel buys the next round.

“He tried to call himself _Geralt Roger Eric du Haute-Bellegarde_ and Vesemir told him he was full of shit – he tried getting the rest of us to call him that but we weren’t having it either,” Eskel is laughing, grief almost forgotten as he stumbles his way through childhood tales. “He eventually decided on ‘Geralt of Rivia’ but, being the drama-queen he is, he learned a Rivian accent just to _really_ sell it.”

And Jaskier is laughing too, eyes alight and chest swelling. “I _knew_ he wasn’t from Rivia!” Jaskier declares, thinking of early mornings where Geralt’s first words came out just a little bit _wrong_ for his voice. “Well come on, where was he from then?”

“Where was he-?” Eskel’s smile dips into something melancholic. “Well, I don’t know. He never said.” Eskel ponders. “I don’t know if he knew. He… he liked to forget, I think, about whatever he was before.”

For a moment they fall into silence, smiles fading. They sip their ale and lose themselves to their own thoughts, the sounds of the other patrons filling the space their voices once took.

Eskel says “He told me about you, you know. Came back to Kaer Morhen for winter a few years back and Lambert started giving him shit for your songs. He said…” Eskel clears the pressure building in his throat. “He said you were… good… I tried getting more out of him but he just said you were important. Never figured out if he meant important in the grand scheme of things or important to him.”

Jaskier doesn’t know what to say to that, eyes fixed on the Witcher’s scarred features. He might be crying again. He isn’t sure.

Eskel says “I think you terrified him.”

And Jaskier doesn’t know what compels him to say it – he’d never said it aloud before – but he says “I loved him.”

And Eskel smiles softly, eyes full of grief, and says “I think he knew. I think that’s why he was scared.”

The next morning Eskel leaves for the south.

Jaskier goes to the coast.

_______

It has been two years. Jaskier hurls Filavandrel’s lute into the ocean.

He is more than a collection of stories about another man. He is more than Geralt of Rivia and the White Wolf he has been crafted into. He is a storyteller and there are more stories that haven’t ended and he just needs to fucking find them but he can’t when he is playing a beautiful instrument gifted in return for one of Geralt’s weird fucking pep talks and –

It has been two years. Two years and still he has not been able to write a song worth a shit that isn’t about grief or lost love or _goddamn fucking Geralt of fucking Rivia and_ –

He has nothing left. He has nothing left after Geralt.

Not ten seconds after throwing the instrument into the waves, he panics and stumbles into the waters to collect the poor lute. He is crying, shivering from the cold waters, and he looks so pathetic, he knows he does, but this is what is left of one loyal Jaskier two years after the fact. He sits on the beach for lifetimes and cries. Two years – he should be fine, but nobody gave him the fucking manual to grief, not for a blow like this.

He goes back to his room. He writes about music notes getting lost at sea, finding refuge in a song, living their lives in the comfort of a ringing tenor. The small coastal village he’d been living in for the past few months had a singular well-loved tavern, and so that is where he makes his new debut. The patrons take to it like a fish to water, and he leaves the tavern with pockets heavy with coin. He wonders if it’s actually a good song or if they’re just being nice. He finds he doesn’t really care.

Odes to Roach, abstract limericks about healing, shanties for the local sailors: he finds his footing in a new repertoire of music. He finds new muses – the seagulls, the little kids splashing each other in the frigid waters, the barmaid he (surprisingly) has no interesting in fucking but plenty of interest in befriending.

Despite it all, Toss a Coin remains his greatest hit.

_______

It has been three years.

He sits in the halls of Cintra, idly plucking at strings and humming some soft, simple tune. The shining light of oncoming dusk streams through the windows, casting distorted shadows of him and his companion stretching on and on.

A little girl sits beside him, her back leaning against his shoulder as she absently braids her doll’s hair. She is the Lion Cub of Cintra, Jaskier knows this, but she is so small and so kind that it is easy to forget sometimes what she will have to become to rule this land.

He had been in Cintra for the better part of a year. At first Queen Calanthe had all but sent him behind bars, but after some convincing from Mousesack the bard had been allowed to stay in town, then to play at parties, then to haunt the castle as he saw fit. The Queen doesn’t trust him – can’t associate him with anything other than a Witcher long dead – but Mousesack is convinced Destiny placed him in their court for a reason and Princess Cirilla begs him for more stories always more stories, and so he stays.

She is nine years old. Jaskier had never wanted kids, never wanted a life stable enough to imagine raising a child, but Ciri makes him think kids might not be so bad.

“Will you sing me the one about the werewolf again?” Ciri asks, abandoning her doll in favor of pestering the poor bard, poking his shoulder and breaking him from his idle composition.

“Which one? I have a few different songs about werewolves, princess,” he smiles, already knowing full well which she is speaking of.

“The one with the Witcher character undoing the curse! The angry mob one!” she says, and Jaskier feels his smile soften into something gloomy.

He complies with the request, telling his embellished tale of the time Geralt had to save a cursed man from an angry mob of villagers. Said man had killed four people in his werewolf state, but Geralt had swooped in, tied him down and forced an antidote down his throat. The man had cried, his wife and daughter had cried, and Geralt had accepted their thanks and their coin with an awkward “hm” and went on his merry way. Jaskier had learned only after the fact that the cursed man had asked Geralt to kill him in shame of what he’d done. Geralt, obviously, had refused and given him one of his blunt but well-meaning pep talks that basically boiled down to “You have a duty to your kid, you need to be alive to fulfill it.”

The irony of this being Ciri’s favorite song is not lost on the bard.

She seems content after the song has finished, humming the melody softly as she continues sorting out her doll’s hair. Jaskier smiles as she settles back against his shoulder, going back to his idle composition.

“Was he real?” she asks as he strums a somber chord progression.

“Was who real?”

“The White Wolf.”

Jaskier’s fingers still on his lute. It has been three years.

“Yes.”

Ciri hums. “What happened to him? Were you friends?”

“We were, yes,” Jaskier says, lips twitching upward at the memory of a gruff _We aren’t friends_ despite the obvious mutual fondness. His smile quickly fades. “But he died.”

“Oh.”

“ _Oh_ indeed.”

Ciri shifts so she can look at his face, eyebrows furrowed and pout on her lips. “How did he die?”

“A building collapsed with him inside,” Jaskier does not tell her he can still taste the dust of broken bricks in the air. “He’s been dead almost three years now.”

“And you still sing about him?”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t it hurt?”

“Yes, but it also helps.”

Ciri’s face does something complicated for a moment. “Sometimes I make up stories about my mom and dad, like what they would be doing if they were here,” she says this quieter, like a secret she shouldn’t voice. Pavetta and Duny had been dead for almost five years. “Can you help me write one?”

Jaskier slides an arm around the princess, hugging her in close and smiling down at her softly and mournfully.

“Of course, princess.”

_______

It has been three and a half years.

Eist and Mousesack bring the princess and queen to Skellige for the summer and Jaskier decides to take Roach and go east for a few months instead. This is how he meets Triss Marigold in a bar outside of Temeria.

She is beautiful and bright in a way that makes Jaskier a little bit dizzy. If he were the same man he was a decade ago he might try and talk her into bed but instead he settles for drinks and conversation. She peppers him with questions in a way that doesn’t quite hurt anymore, not with the time gone by and the tenderness behind her words. She knew Yennefer, he learns. She knew of what Yennefer wanted. She knew of what Yennefer was capable of.

Portals. Jaskier did not know she could make portals. She was, apparently, very good at portals.

Well, that and convincing people to follow their desires.

It dawns on Jaskier slowly. He feels it crawling up his spine, something firing in his bones and shooting like lightening through his muscles. He grabs Triss’s hand as she is in the middle of a story about Yennefer and some elf-enthused research magician, and she startles.

“I never saw the bodies.”

“What?” Triss grabs his hand just as tight although confusion still swims in her eyes.

Jaskier feels like he is about to burst out of his own skin. “Triss, I never saw their bodies after the building collapsed. I left before the rubble was cleared, I – they might – fuck!” Jaskier is vibrating at the possibility. “Could Yennefer have portaled them out?”

Triss’s eyes widen and her other hand finds purchase in the bard’s shirt, grounding her as the revelation paired with a breathless “Yes” cuts through her.

They stare at each other, buzzing with stupid fucking hope.

It is a possibility. That is all they have. But it is more than they’ve had in years.

“They might be alive.”

/\\_____

Jaskier is chasing stories.

It has been four years since Geralt went missing. “Went missing” is an important phrase here because Jaskier spent far too long believing he was dead.

In the months after Triss and him had their little revelation, they’d travelled back to Rinde and learned that two bodies were recovered and that those bodies were a young servant girl and the mayor’s cat, no Witcher nor Witch in sight. The elf from years before, the one in love with Yennefer, he gives them all the information he possibly can about the aftermath of the collapse – any oddities found in the rubble, lingering magic – and it becomes more and more apparent that their loved ones could not be declared dead.

So yes, Jaskier is chasing stories on the back of a legendary horse with a beautiful sorceress and it feels a lot like those heroic stories they tell children, but this time it’s _real_.

They find dead ends galore for months.

Someone says there is a white-haired man in Kaedwen with a silver sword and a gruff demeanor, but he ends up being nothing but an aging man. There is a beautiful woman with strange eyes in Redania, but she has not an ounce of magic. There is someone killing monsters outside Cintra –

And that one ends up being Eskel.

“If Geralt were alive he’d have sent word to Kaer Morhen,” Eskel says as he hauls a drowner carcass onto his horse. Triss, Jaskier, and Roach stand on the lake’s shore, noses wrinkled at the smell of blood and the sight of Eskel’s potion-darkened eyes against his scared features. “He was always Vesemir’s kid, really. He’d have told him he wasn’t dead after your song started getting around.”

“There were no bodies,” Triss calls, her voice bright in the dismal forest they’d found themselves in. “And traces of magic similar to Yennefer’s were all over the house. There’s a very strong chance they’re out there.”

“And who are you exactly?” Eskel’s polite nature strains against the stress of their quest and all that it implies.

“Triss Marigold. I’m a friend of Yennefer and Geralt’s.”

Eskel looks at her a little dubiously before casting his eyes to Jaskier. “I hope you guys find him, I really do,” he throws a saddle blanket over the drowner corpse. “But I’m sorry, I just can’t hope like that. Not about this.”

There is a string of lyric poking at the back of Jaskier’s brain – something about Witchers running from the things that might need them.

“Just keep an eye out then, ears open, all that good stuff,” Jaskier’s voice bounces as he speaks, hopeful despite the Witcher’s hesitance. He fidgets. “Please.”

Eskel gives him a look and Jaskier remembers years ago in an inn in Lyria, a confession he shouldn’t’ve said.

“Stay safe, Jaskier,” he tries to give a smile, but with the potion-dark eyes it comes across a little unnerving. He looks to Triss. “And it was a pleasure to meet you, Miss Marigold.”

And he goes on his way down his Path with nothing but his horse and a corpse.

Triss looks to Jaskier. Jaskier looks to Roach. Roach nickers.

They continue on their own way.

___/\\__

They say there is a man with snow white hair who lives on the western edge of a village near Creyden.

It has been five years.

They say he lives alone – just him and his small patch of crops. When he comes into town, he does not speak unless spoken to. He does not make eye contact with the women who stare with interest or the men who subtly size him up. He does not go to the tavern in the evenings or to the square for holidays. He comes into town with a goal, gets what he needs, and returns to his humble abode.

They say he came to the village a little over four and a half years ago, blood under his fingernails and fear in his hazel eyes. He wore dark clothing when he arrived, but since arriving he hasn’t worn such attire in favor of the more simple, earthy garb of a commoner. Within days of arriving and settling into the empty shack on the outskirts of town he had cut his strange white hair short and tilled the land behind his home.

He had been there ever since.

The village is small but honest, but even honest villages are not without their gossip. There are dozens of half-told tales and uncertain claims of the man doing this and that. He was said to be mistrustful of the local mage, or really any mage coming through town; some say he was seen trying to gain the trust of one of the stray cats in town, waiting patiently for the creature to approach his outstretched hand; he apparently stopped in the middle of the road once to stare at a bard performing on a street corner; the baker’s wife claims he once came into their shop to buy a Danish for the blacksmith’s eldest daughter.

That last one, Jaskier is willing to believe. The story goes that the man had saved her – Dayla is her name – from the rather aggressive advances of a drunken man almost three years back. She had brought him new horseshoes for his secondhand steed as thanks, and he had tried to say no, saying it was too much, really, he was just doing what was right – but she had insisted and the following week he had brought her some fresh herbs picked from the riverside and a rather pretty stone from the river for her son, and ever since they’ve been caught in an endless loop of trying to ‘pay the other back’. This piece of information almost makes Jaskier believe it isn’t him – Geralt – but then he thinks of Geralt’s stupid stubborn streak of selflessness and reconsiders.

Then there was the monster event.

A little over four years after the mountain of a man made his way into the village’s reality, there was a… Well, a _something_ lurking along the forest edge. It had eaten several sheep, a dog, and scared the shit out of one of the men in town hellbent on getting rid of it. The village was getting used to telling their children to avoid the forest, being cautious on the southern edge of town, when the thing became bold. In the late hours of a summer night the creature prowled its way into town and had managed to corner a couple finding their way home from the tavern.

Three people died trying to fight the beast off before the mysterious white-haired man appeared from the shadows with an ill-cared for great sword. He moved with a practiced ease that seemed to surprise even himself, avoiding the monster’s claws and fangs before managing to lodge his blade into the thing’s chest.

There was silence for all of fifteen seconds before the previously cornered woman started screaming again, sobbing into her husband’s chest and staring at the man with a complicated mixture of fear and appreciation. The small crowd that had gathered in response to the attack stayed frozen, watching the man pull his blade from the corpse, stumble a few steps backwards, and collapse to his knees, eyes locked on the monster and chest heaving. In the meagre torchlight, the man’s eyes seemed to flash gold. His simple white shirt was splattered in the dark blood of the monster; his thigh oozed red from a small wound where the things’ claws had gotten him; it seemed that his cheeks were shining with fearful tears. His hand clutched at his chest, trying to find purchase on something that was not there.

One of the women from the crowd stepped forward – Dayla.

She approached him slowly as though he were a scared animal, not the shy, charming man she had been becoming familiar with. Her hand had gently come to rest on his shoulder, and that small pressure seemed to snap him out of his panic. His eyes fixed on Dayla, the fear that clouded them giving way to something softer. He rested his own hand over hers, gasping to catch his breath and looking at the corpse of the creature with a renewed look of clarity.

“It was confused,” he grunted. The crowd of villagers listened. “It’s young. Must not’ve known any better than to wander into town. Normally the parents still care for them when they’re this young.”

Dayla’s other hand gently brushed through the man’s short white hair, breaking him from his daze again. “How do you know that?”

He stared at her blankly. “I don’t know.” He stood, looking from the monster to Dayla to the crowd to the traumatized couple. “I don’t know.”

He picked up his sword and ran off into the night.

That was almost four months ago.

Jaskier follows the mutterings and stories to that little village near Creyden, the path long and winding. Roach seems to understand they are on the precipice of something and troops along as though the hours are not long and laborious. Triss splits off to follow a lead on Yennefer, and so it is the once familiar duo of a bard and a Witcher’s horse taking on this particular line of inquiry.

He gets into town early in the evening, heading straight for what he knows to be the hub of any and all local gossip: the tavern.

He does not cry when he learns the mysterious man had been gone for almost two weeks.

He does not cry when he learns that Dayla woman and her son had gone with him.

When he enters that little shack that the man had called home, though, he does. The knickknacks adorning the meager shelves – the dried herbs and odd mismatch of animal skulls, the plants beginning to wither in the backyard, the potion bottles turned into vases with drooping wildflowers – they speak of a man trying to start a life worthy of holding onto. The sword abandoned in the closet, the silver necklace with the all too familiar pendant hanging from an errant nail beside the fireplace – they speak of a man trying to run from another life entirely.

So yes, Jaskier cries. He clutches the Witcher medallion in his hands and takes in the life left behind, and he cries. He was close. He was so close and Geralt was gone again.

But _fuck_. He’s alive. Geralt is alive.

Once the tears have dried, he picks up, and he continues on his way.

Geralt of Rivia is alive. Jaskier feels the world start turning again.

/\\____/

He spends the winter in Cintra. He does not tell the Queen nor her mage that their Witcher is alive.

It has been five and a half years.

Ciri is almost twelve years old. She is growing taller, smarter, ever more beautiful. She watches him carefully when he comes back. He feels her eyes on the back of his head as he moves about one of the sitting rooms, collecting pages of song he had haphazardly strewn about in an attempt to string randomly thought up lines into actual songs.

She says “You seem different.”

Jaskier knows this game with her. She points out the obvious until what lies underneath is revealed. He plays along.

“I was only away for a year, princess,” his voice contains traces of laughter. “I’m still the same old man.”

“No. I mean you’ve got…” she screws her features up into something nearing a pout. “ _Something_ coming off of you.”

Jaskier straightens up, directing his full attention towards her. This is not where he was expecting this to go.

“And what do you mean by that?” he asks, his voice staying light.

She looks him over once, scrutinizing as if looking for the source of the _something_ as she called it. It isn’t comfortable being so critically looked at by an eleven-year-old girl. Jaskier shuffles awkwardly.

She stands from her perch on one of the cushioned seats and pokes him directly in the center of the chest. “What’s this?”

Oh. Child Surprise.

Jaskier smiles softly and takes the medallion out from where it lies under his shirt. He had taken only the medallion and a few handful handfuls of berries from Geralt’s shack. He knew the medallion was something meant to be worn only by Witchers, and frankly if he ever ran into Eskel or any of the others again he’d probably get hell for having it, but it was a little piece of Geralt so Jaskier kept it close.

“This, dear princess, belonged to the white wolf,” Jaskier hums, slipping it off his neck and holding it out for her to take a closer look at.

She gently brushes over fingers over the wolf carving, eyes wide with wonder. Jaskier speculated idly whether the medallion _did_ have magic or… _something_ emanating off of it that a man such as himself couldn’t quite pick up. If the something had anything to do with Geralt, though, he was not surprised that his Child Surprise could sense it.

Ciri looks up at him rather suddenly, hand still pressed into the medallion. “He’s alive, isn’t he?”

Jaskier cocks his head, lightly unnerved at the confidence in the child’s question, but because he could never lie to her he says “Yes.”

She pushes the necklace back towards him, and he allows her to fold his fingers over the pendant. He swears it feels warm to the touch.

“Do you know where he is?”

“No, but me and a friend, we’ve been looking.”

“You’ll find him.”

Jaskier smiles fondly, sliding the necklace back over his neck and gently ruffling the princess’s hair. “If you so decree it, then I’ve no other choice, princess.”

She laughs softly. “Will you sing me another song?”

The one about Geralt and the Werewolf is still her favorite.

___/\\__

They find Yennefer first.

It has been almost six years.

She is waiting for them when they approach the lone house in the middle of the woods. Roach huffs as she comes to a stop before the house and the Witch, and Jaskier can’t blame her – her expression is almost _annoyed_ as she stands on her porch with her arms crossed over her chest.

Triss all but hops off of Roach, running up as if she were going to hug Yennefer but pausing a few feet away.

“You’re alive,” Triss says simply.

Yennefer cocks an eyebrow, but there is a smile growing on her face. “Took you long enough.”

And then Triss does hug her and Yennefer allows it. A smile graces the witch’s features as she gracefully takes Triss’s angry but grateful chastising, and for a moment Jaskier gets, possibly, why Geralt went back for her. She is beautiful and certainly more powerful than Jaskier could possibly fathom, but she is also so obviously aching for some sort of love that Jaskier can’t help but think of Eskel’s stories of a lonely little Witcher boy.

Jaskier slowly slides off of Roach, and Yennefer’s eyes land on him, her smile falling. Triss pulls out of the hug to look between Jaskier and Yennefer, and for a moment there is only the sound of the wind in the trees.

“He’s alive,” Yennefer says. “You already know that though, don’t you?”

Jaskier’s hand goes to his chest and lands right over where the medallion lies under his shirt. “Do you know where he is?” He swears the pendant grows warmer as he speaks.

“Last I knew he was in Creyden,” Yennefer watched his expression closely. “But from the look on your face I suspect that wasn’t the answer you were looking for.”

Jaskier felt the thin strand of hope he’d created snap. “He left Creyden almost a year ago now with a woman from town. He abandoned his Witcher medallion when he left.”

“Well that makes sense as he’s not a Witcher anymore.”

_“What?”_

And this is how Jaskier ends up getting the story that would’ve solved the past six years pain. Him and Triss sit on her lumpy couch in her weird ass hermit house with steaming cups of tea and a witch curled up on the love seat across from them.

She begins to explain.

Geralt had the wishes.

“But that doesn’t make sense,” Jaskier stops her right off the bat. “The state my voice was in – I mean, he wouldn’t – I almost _died_ and as much as he –“

“He wanted some peace and you wouldn’t shut up.”

Jaskier makes an offended squawk noise that in any other context probably would’ve sent Triss giggling.

“Djinn are… slippery.” Yennefer tries to explain. “They like to twist things. Geralt wanted you to shut up, your throat gets fucked. Geralt makes some over-dramatic threat, a man’s head gets blown up.”

“A man’s head _what_?” Triss asks this time.

She continues to explain.

Geralt came to Rinde looking for help, not realizing he had the wishes, and sought out Yennefer’s help. Yennefer wanted to trap the djinn and become its vessel, but to weaken it Jaskier – or Geralt, as it was – had to make his last wish.

“You wanted to be a vessel for a djinn?” Jaskier leans back on the lump cushions. “Bottling a genie in your own being, really? Why the actual fuck would you want to do that? That’s like a death wish, isn’t it?”

“Oh yes, I’m sure you know all about djinn and their magic don’t you, bard,” her voice grows bitter. Jaskier puts up his hands in a sign of surrender.

Triss cocks her head to the side. “But you don’t seem to be the vessel now, are you?”

The story goes on.

Geralt had run back into the building for Yennefer and tried to talk her out of it – even going so far as to try and give her his last wish. She refused, screamed at him to make a wish, and gave a rather cruel recommendation –

_“You could choose not to be a Witcher.”_

– and, well, Geralt had… taken the recommendation.

But djinn are slippery.

He lost some things. He knew who he was, but he was detached from it as though his past were a series of memorized facts and statistics. Some things were fuzzy, especially around Kaer Morhen and his abilities. He could wield a sword, but it terrified him to think of what he might do with it. His suppressed emotions had come unbottled as well, and for almost a week he swung precariously between delightful laughter, bitter sobs, and overwhelming fear before beginning the human tradition of stamping down any and all unnecessary emotions. There was also the eyes: less gold and more hazel, less animal and more human.

Yennefer, on the other hand, lost the djinn and almost lost her life, as well.

She had just managed to portal them out before the building collapsed, but she had little control over where they went and thus they ended up in the Craingorn mountains.

Geralt and her stayed in Barefield for the better part of a month, her weak and him confused. She tried to help clarify his jumbled identity, and he seemed to welcome the help up until it became too much and he left. She visited him once in Creyden, just to make sure he was alright and self-sufficient, but that was over two years ago.

Jaskier and Triss are silent as the story wraps up with Yennefer moving into her little house in the woods a few months back.

They sip their tea.

“But what I don’t understand,” Triss finally voices. “Is why he had his medallion in Creyden. If he really didn’t want to be a Witcher, why not leave it when he left you?”

Yennefer’s eyes stray to the bard. The medallion definitely feels warm again, but how much of that is just in his head? He can’t say.

“I didn’t know him that well, honestly, so I can’t say for sure,” Yennefer tucks her feet underneath her on the loveseat. “But if I were to wake up to such an absurd story as the one I told him, I’d hold onto any proof I had, too.”

Jaskier’s hand settles over the medallion’s warmth.

“But he left it when he left Creyden?” Triss cocks her head to the side.

A heartless chuckle bubbles from Jaskier’s throat. “Well he had a new story, didn’t he?” His fingers clutch the fabric of his shirt. “That woman left with him. He had something else to cling to.”

Yennefer’s gaze softens. She sits up straighter, looking at the bard with something close to fondness. “When he brought you to me, he basically told me he’d whore himself out to me for the night if I saved you.”

Jaskier stares.

“When you were resting he kept fussing about you,” she continues. “Said he didn’t want you to die with his bitchy insult being the last thing you knew. Came back into that building because he thought he owed me something for saving your life.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“You don’t get to be bitter about some girl, bard. He cared for you in a way I don’t think he was capable of processing,” she flicks a strand of hair from her face, looking the bard up and down. “Really, I think you scared the shit out of him.”

He laughs dryly. “You aren’t the first to tell me that,” his voice comes out bitter. He huffs, leaning back heavily against the cushions. “Well, I guess I damn well scared him away, then didn’t I? I mean – he _left_.”

The witch sighs and Triss has the _audacity_ to say “Oh, Jas…” which isn’t fair because she only says that when he cries and he isn’t even crying right now.

Yennefer leans towards him.

“If you’re angry then the only thing to do is find him. He’s the only one who can give you answers.”

It has been almost six years.

As it seems things always end these days, Jaskier cries.

\\____/\

They search. For months, they venture about the continent, sometimes in pairs or all together and sometimes alone. It is one of those times when it’s just Jaskier and Roach that he meets her.

Jaskier finds himself playing at a bar in Kovir. There is a woman with long auburn hair and flat green eyes and she watches him closely as he performs his songs about the White Wolf.

It has been six and a half years.

For her, it has been much longer.

Jaskier’s set ends. He goes to the counter for some ale, accepting coin and exchanging banter as he goes. The ale is not the best, but it will do the trick. He idly looks about the room, the crowds, the dim lighting, and eventually settles.

There is a woman staring at him.

The medallion grows warm against his chest. The feeling is familiar, and so is the woman, somehow. His hand comes up to rest on his chest, almost protectively covering the pendant.

She sits across the room like a forbidden goddess, all lengthy hair and glassy eyes and subtle beauty. There is something tragic about her, from the pinch of her mouth to the power thrumming under her skin is like she is waiting for the worst. She sits alone in the corner, brooding, her eyes on Jaskier.

As if entranced, Jaskier’s feet carry him away from the bar. Away from the crowds he goes – away away to the corner, and – _oh_ – this too feels familiar in a way he _cannot does not_ _cannot_ understand. The woman watches, says nothing, does nothing. Jaskier sits across from her at the table.

He wonders if he is dreaming.

It feels as though he is in a haze, sitting across from this woman with an ale in his hand and a pendant warming his skin. The woman reaches forwards and grabs the chain of the medallion, pulling it free of his doublet.

“Was this his?” she asks.

Jaskier nods. He feels as though he is somewhere else.

“Do you think you’ll ever see him again?”

“Yes.”

She lets go of the medallion and it thumps onto his chest. She stares at him with an intensity that makes him want to run.

“He’s scared.”

And Jaskier blinks at that, feels as though the floor has dropped from under him. “You’ve seen him then?”

“He needs you,” she barrels on before Jaskier can scoff at the sentiment. “And the girl needs you too. His child.”

The world is unraveling and this woman is the one ripping the seams. Geralt of Rivia does not need him. Ciri doesn’t need him. _Nobody_ needs him but he needs everyone else, doesn’t she know that? He wants to cry and scream and curse at her, ask her who the fuck she thinks she is _and actually who even is she?_ – and Jaskier is about to do any one of these things when she leans across the table, suddenly close to him, gripping his hand tightly where it rests on the tabletop. She whispers –

_“People linked by destiny will always find each other.”_

And then she is gone.

Jaskier reels for a moment, eyes flickering about the bar and hands scrambling to clutch the medallion on his chest. His heart beats too fast and he feels as though he just missed something important.

His ears somehow impossibly home in on a hushed conversation from the table next to him.

They speak of war in the South.

Jaskier drinks.

__/\\___

Jaskier lays in Yennefer’s bed in her little home with Triss and the other witch curled into a dog pile on the downy blankets. Nights in Yennefer’s home end like this sometimes, and it is always welcomed. To doze beside these two women, so powerful and lonely, it made Jaskier’s heart swell with a love that was unfamiliar: family. It felt like family, and Jaskier hadn’t one of those in decades.

“Do you think we’ll find him?” he asks into the darkness of the night.

Triss gently brushes a hand through his hair. He hears Yennefer shift on the other side of her, reaching an arm over her to idly pat the man’s shoulder.

“We will,” she promises. “We’ve got to.”

It has been seven years.

They do not know it yet, but Nilfgaard is coming for Cintra.

____/\\_

It has been seven years.

_He dreams of pale blonde hair. There is a girl running through a forest. There is a girl, fearful, trying desperately to find something. There is a girl following the sounds of songs and fables. There is a girl with wide eyes and a flowing cape and she is running. She is scared. There is a girl running from fires with stories on her lips of werewolves and shipwrecks. She is so scared._

_There is a woman with long auburn hair and scared green eyes. She is running through stone corridors screaming a name he does not recognize. He chases her until his lungs ache but she is always out of reach, always just disappearing behind the next corner. Always leaving leaving leaving and then she is there, and he is there, and she is staring at him with tears in her eyes, nimble fingers tugging a necklace from his shirt and holding it up for him to see the symbol once used to bottle a genie. He feels the entity screaming to be released from him, hands clawing at his very soul begging to be let out please let me out I’m sorry and_

_There is a golden eyed man kneeling in the middle of a kitchen, bodies of Nilgaardian soldiers about him. A woman with calloused hands is clutching a bleeding child in the doorway, staring at the man with – no, please, not you too – with fear and tears swimming in her eyes._

_The world narrows and narrows and he feels his heart and he feels his heart and he feels his heart his heart his his his_

_Geralt looks up._

Jaskier wakes with a scream on his lips, hand clutching at the medallion and all but throwing it off of him, feeling burns where it lied against his chest. His heart is beating out of time, slow slow and then _fast_ and then –

He is in Yennefer’s guest bedroom which is really just his bedroom and he is screaming and _Geralt_ and he needs to find Geralt he needs –

Triss is there, gripping his hands and breathing with him, trying to get him to stop shaking – when did he start shaking why is he shaking? – and wiping tears from his face. His throat feels raw but he is no longer screaming. He needs to tell her and Yenn but his words get lost in gasps of air and

Yennefer appears in his field of vision, eyes flickering to where he’d thrown the _hot too hot_ Witcher medallion. She gently presses a hand to his forehead, and he feels her energy seep into his panicked brain. He feels his heart begin to slow, his breath come more evenly.

Yennefer’s eyes go wide. She knows what he knows.

It has been seven years.

“We need to find Ciri.”

______/

Cintra burns.

Jaskier and Yennefer watch from a distance as the fires turn the black skies grey, soldiers moving in and out of the walls and chaos seeming to quake about the city.

Roach stomps at the ground, uneasy. Jaskier gently strokes the mare’s neck from his position on her back, but the telltale tremble of his hands does little to calm her. Yennefer stands a few feet in front of them, eyes closed and hands outstretched as she tries to sense a scared princess among the disorder. A small trickle of blood seeps from her nose. Her hands fall to her sides.

“Fuck.”

Jaskier thinks of a little girl with ash blonde hair swapping fairy tales with a silly bard. He thinks of a loyal sorcerer trusting destiny and somehow trusting him, of a bitter queen with a stubborn protective streak, a grandfather with dirty jokes and treats aplenty.

He mourns them, not knowing for sure if they are gone, no longer trusting death to take people without him there to see it.

He does not cry.

_______

They said there was a man with snow white hair and a woman with calloused hands living on the lake a little outside of town with a child. The story went – the people said that they were _happy_. The village did their best to grant them the privacy they so desperately desired, and the hubbub of rumors remained dull, but Jaskier is chasing stories because he cannot find Ciri but maybe he can find the man meant to protect her and –

Jaskier’s footsteps are too loud on the creaky floorboards of that lakeside house. The stench of rotting bodies fills his senses, Nilfgaardian soldiers dead on the floor and a young boy curled in the doorway of a bedroom, stomach wound still sticky with blood.

The medallion is hot against his chest.

Geralt is not here. Neither is the woman Dayla.

Triss is at Aretuza, he knows, trying to stop Nilfgaard’s push north, Yennefer is on the search for Ciri still, Roach waits outside, and he hasn’t seen Eskel in years, so he is alone in that lakeside house with only corpses and signs of an abandoned life as company.

Jaskier approaches the blood-saturated body of the child in the doorway, his heart in his throat. He is young, maybe nine or ten, with a mop of dark curly hair on his head all caked with blood and beautiful dark eyes staring unblinkingly into nothing. He is too old to be Geralt’s, but the thought still settles in him odd. Witchers cannot have children, Jaskier knows, but he wonders if the djinn undid that as well.

There is another child somewhere on this continent. She also belongs to Geralt of Rivia, and Jaskier knows she must be just as scared and lost as he is. His child surprise, and oh, what a surprise it will be when they find each other.

Jaskier turns to leave. He freezes.

There is a woman watching him from the entry to the house.

Curly black hair and cocoa brown eyes, not unlike the boy lying dead on the ground. Her eyes are shattered, grief-stricken, and Jaskier knows that this is how he looked for years after Rinde. He knows she is shattered over the same man. He knows this woman looked at him with fear in her eyes after watching him mow down the soldiers that still lay in her home.

“Are you Jaskier?” her voice is fragile, throat raw. Crying. Jaskier was familiar with a voice broken from crying. He does not ask how she knows his name – he knows hers, after all.

“Yes. And you’re Dayla of Creyden.”

She pulls her cloak a little tighter around her. “Yes.”

Her eyes fall to the child on the floor. Jaskier thinks of the dream, of her figure hunched over the boy as he bled and bled, of her panicked eyes watching a gentle giant become a monster.

“What was his name?” Jaskier asks gently.

She stares at him, shell-shocked, tears slowly falling from her eyes. “Syrus.” A sob bubbles from her throat. “His name was Syrus and he was my boy.”

And Jaskier knows he should find Geralt and Ciri, knows he has no time to lose, knows he hated the idea of this woman not hours before, but he slowly offers a hand out for her to take and she grips it so tight her knuckles turn white.

He helps her clear the corpses of the soldiers first, unceremoniously stacking them in the yard and setting the whole pile ablaze. They clean Syrus’s body next, clearing the blood, dressing him in clean clothes, and tying daisies into his curls. Jaskier spends the rest of the afternoon digging a grave as Dayla scrubs blood from the floorboards, and by time twilight comes they are burying the child with sage and lilies, planting forget-me-nots on the overturned soil.

The darkness settles in for the night, then, and so do they. Jaskier cooks fish from the lake, and as they eat their meal and drink stale beer Dayla asks “You’re looking for Geralt, aren’t you? That’s why you came here.”

“I am, and that is,” Jaskier says. “But I don’t plan on leaving until I know you’re okay.”

She prickles slightly at that. “You don’t know me.”

“I don’t, you’re right,” Jaskier nods. He looks at her inquisitively. “But you seem to know me. At least a little.”

Dayla scoffs, curling her legs under her on the couch they both sit on. The fire rages in the hearth before them. Jaskier can’t help but wonder if this is how her and Geralt spent their nights before retiring to bed – their shared bed, by the look of the house’s layout.

“The witch told me about you years and years ago,” she says. “Told me the story of how she knew him, and she couldn’t tell that story without telling what little she knew about you. I got a little more information out of Geralt, and a whole lot more from the songs I heard floating around.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Jaskier feels a smile pull at the corners of his lips. Yennefer did not tell him she’d met this woman. “My songs are as informative as they are catchy, are they not?”

“You loved him.” It’s not a question, more an observation.

She is staring at him, the fire casting light and shadows that play off her graceful features and Jaskier is not for the first time struck by the people that Geralt seemed to keep in his circle, people like Mousesack and Triss and Eskel and, yeah, like Roach, too. They are all so beautiful and strong and wise that Jaskier wonders how Geralt didn’t kill him decades ago. Jaskier is not like this woman, not like any of the people crowding Geralt’s life. But still he must admit to this woman that he knows Geralt was fond of if not in love with –

“I _still_ love him.”

And she smiles, a soft and somber thing. He half expects her to respond as Eskel did, as Yennefer did, with some bullshit about his love terrifying a mutant man with muscles the size of watermelons but what she says instead is almost worse.

“He loved you _so much_.” She is crying again, loss settling over her shoulders. They buried her son today and she has suddenly found herself alone in the world. “He loved me, I know he did, but he was carrying a torch for you, you know that?”

Jaskier is crying too. He is ready to deny it, ready to explain that Geralt never even wanted him as a friend much less anything more, but it is nearing midnight and they buried a child today and days ago he watched Cintra burn and –

And Jaskier is chasing stories, but he is more than Geralt of Rivia, long as that took him to learn.

He reaches out and grabs Dayla’s hand, the callouses of a childhood spent playing in a forge and an adulthood raising a child. She, too, is more than the man she has loved.

“Will you tell me about your son?”

\\______

When he leaves in the morning Dayla gives him a basket of dried fish, fruit from the garden, and a kiss on the cheek. He tries to get her to come with him, tells her of the beauty of the world, promises to find somewhere safe she can start over in a home with no ghosts, but she refuses with a teary smile.

“I’m not like you,” she rests a hand on his cheek, her gaze so earnest Jaskier fights the urge to look away. “I don’t have that sort of hope.”

Jaskier fights the way his throat tightens with tears. Roach nuzzles him like she means to comfort. Dayla goes back inside with a swish of her skirts.

The path ahead is long, but Jaskier knows it is a path he must take.

___/\\__

Nilfgaard is going to Sodden Hill. If they make it past there, then they will take the North. There is a group of mages set on defending the hill, and of course Triss, being as goddamn _good_ as she is, promises to fight.

Between Jaskier’s tales telling of Dayla’s lakeside home, Yennefer’s frustration telling of a fruitless search for Princess Cirilla, and Triss’s message telling of battle, the stress is palpable in the air of Yennefer’s little hut.

Yennefer paces back and forth so aggressively Jaskier worries she will wear a dent into the living room floor. He sits on the couch, eyes following the witch’s shoulders creep up and up towards her ears as she paces back and forth and back and forth.

“You could help them, you know,” Jaskier prods softly. “You’re one of the most powerful mages on this continent if Triss and Mousesack’s opinions are to be trusted.”

Yennefer pauses in her pacing long enough to scowl at him.

“I left Aretuza and the people there years before Rinde even, and as far as they know now, I’m dead,” she growls.

And Jaskier didn’t want to use the other mage as leverage, he really didn’t, but he knows they sit on the precipice of war and all the chaos that comes with it and so he asks oh so innocently “If Triss dies out there will you use that same justification?”

Yennefer trains him in a glare and oh – if looks could kill Jaskier would be so dead even his _ghost_ would need a grave. But there is doubt there as well. Fear. Jaskier thinks of the particularly bad nights spent curled up in Yennefer’s bed, Triss in the middle of them with her head tucked into the witch’s chest. He thinks of Triss’s bright laughter and well-meaning pokes and prods and knows Yennefer is thinking of the same things.

The next morning Yenn portals to Sodden Hill.

With no other leads, Jaskier and Roach start off towards Sodden.

\\____/\

There is a man with snow white hair riding a secondhand steed towards his destiny he tried so hard to deny. He ran from it, changed himself in hopes it would unchain him, but he cannot undo what has been promised to him. People linked by destiny will always find each other, and he thinks of a princess he has never met and a witch who changed him and – and a bard with eyes the color of music.

He is not a Witcher. He is not a monster.

He is a man.

He is afraid.

\\_/\\___

There is a child with ashy blonde hair in a field of tall grasses. She watches men approach her, fear clogging her throat, a measly stick in her hand for defense. She falls to her knees, feeling consciousness leave her. Winds billow her cloak about her, throwing her hair about her face.

Words slip from her lips.

Next comes a scream.

\\_/\\_/\

There is a bard singing his way to Sodden.

He sings of a man dead, a man resurrected, a man in love. He sings of a man who fights though he is no longer a monster and he is all the more brave for it. He sings of a man that he loves more than anything else in this world, more than the stars and the melodies and the gods. He sings his throat raw, epics and ballads and battle cries reminding the common folk to keep hope because _they are as strong as Geralt of Rivia._

The crowds cheer and Jaskier feels _powerful_ , drunken on song and -

Toss a Coin is _still_ his biggest hit.

/\\__/\\__/\

There is a witch standing before her teacher.

Yennefer sets her jaw, ready for hell to be unleashed upon her before the battle even begins. What she is not ready for is the warmth of arms wrapping around her, hugging her close and whispering relieved shocked angry _relieved_ half-sentences into her shoulder.

She grips Tissaia just as tightly.

\\_/\\_/\\_/

There is a woman with auburn hair and a guilty heart. She watches a white wolf set his course towards Sodden. He does not know why he is doing so. He blames destiny.

She disappears before he knows she was even there.

/\\_/\\_/\\_

They are on the precipice of something.

The Battle of Sodden Hill rages, carrying ash and the scent of death on the wind. Roach huffs more often at the dusty air, but Jaskier urges her on. He worries, knowing somewhere out there are the people he loves, knowing if something were to happen there was nothing he could do.

They are just south of Sodden Hill. He is so close, but as night settles in and Roach lets out a particularly nasty huff at the ashy air, Jaskier realizes he will have to wait for the morning to continue. He makes camp a ways off the path, carefully hiding in a particularly small clearing in the dense grove. The battle is close, but he is south and Nilfgaard is going North so he thinks he’ll be safe.

Sleep takes him as soon as his head hits the pillow.

_He dreams about music notes getting lost at sea,  
finding refuge in a song,  
living their lives in the comfort of a ringing tenor._

_He dreams of a lute floating on the ocean’s waves,  
of a man only another’s hope can save,  
of a woman growing flowers over children’s graves._

_He dreams of a child promised to monsters,  
of a monster damned to wander,  
of a fearful fleeing father._

_He dreams of witches,  
of witchers,  
of children  
of horses  
of men._

_He d–_

_Yennefer_.

The medallion is hot against his chest when he wakes, a witch’s name echoing in his head although he does not know why.

He rises as if in a daze, looking around the forest in the new sun light. Roach raises her head at him curiously. She watches the man stumble off into the woods with his doublet still undone and camp still set up in the clearing.

They are on the precipice of something.

He moves as if possessed, feet stomping through the underbrush with unfound grace and swiftness. The medallion hums lightly. His heart hammers in his chest. He thinks of Triss and love and Yennefer and Eskel and _fear_ and the Nilfgaardian army and – and –

_Geralt. Ciri._

It has been seven and a half years.

At the top of the hill maybe a dozen yards away there are two figures clutching each other, one large and mighty and the other small and brave.

The medallion goes silent and cold all at once.

Two pairs of teary eyes land on him.

A sob bubbles from his throat and the little girl chokes at the sound, a sob of her own coming from her small frame. The man stares, eyes wide and scared and _so full_ and Jaskier knows that this is where he is meant to be.

As destiny demands, he runs to them.

**Author's Note:**

> apparently i have a thing for not-quite killing characters i love.  
> come scream with me @tripleforte on tumblr!


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